Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | If you do not forgive…neither will your Father in Heaven forgive you… Mark 11:26

In a small, rather out-of-the-way cemetery in Upper New York is an unmarked tombstone bearing the single word, “FORGIVEN!” Nothing more or less—simply “FORGIVEN!” A person cannot help wondering, “What was forgiven, and by whom?” What happened that caused someone who knew the identity of the body that lay in an unmarked grave to leave behind that message? Was it a husband who deeply had hurt a wife? Was it a prodigal son who had wandered far from the ideals and aspirations of his father? Or, was it someone who had tasted richly of the grace of God and wanted everyone to know that he had been forgiven? The secret has long since been buried with the remains of a person forgotten by life, but there is one thing for sure, the great need for forgiveness exists today!

A man or woman never reaches so high as when he stoops to forgive someone. In this business of daily living it is inevitable that sooner or later we tread upon the rights of another—a friend or business associate, a husband or a wife. Whether it is with malice or simply thoughtlessness, we find ourselves in the position of needing and having to give what no one else can give—forgiveness. Some 2000 years ago Jesus Christ gave us the example as He looked upon those who had become His executioners and cried, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

The Apostle Paul instructed that we be “kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32, KJV). In those words we have the great rationale for forgiveness—if God has forgiven us, then we have no right or reason to fail to forgive someone else. When it came to grudges and resentment toward another, Jesus was very blunt. He said simply, “If you do not forgive, neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your sins” (Mark 11:26).

What does it mean, really to forgive someone else? Insight into the true nature of forgiveness comes from the Greek word for forgiveness which we find in the pages of Scripture. The Greek word is aphiamị, which means literally to “give up the right to compensation for what someone has done to you.” The record is removed, so that you no longer have any right to expect redress for what has happened.

Newspapers carried the story of several government officials who had been charged with corruption in the city of Salonika, Greece. Before they could be tried, mice devoured files in the civil court archives and ate up the evidence. That, of course, is not quite a picture of forgiveness. If, however, those who had been charged had wronged an individual, and the individual, willing to forgive them of his own accord, destroyed the evidence against them, then there would have been nothing to use as evidence. Forgiveness would have been complete! None of us lives so perfectly that we do not find ourselves in the position of having to ask for forgiveness.

Forgiveness means that you put something aside—completely and finally—as though it had never happened. If you say, “Well, we just won’t talk about that anymore,” you may have declared a truce, but you have not really forgiven a person. You have simply buried the hatchet with the handle sticking up so that you can use the incident as a whip against the other if he gets out of line—or, should I say when he gets out of line, because in our human frailty we are bound to stumble.

Forgiveness must be a healing balm that covers the wounds of our human frailties and binds up the fractures of our human relations. Forgive we must—even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us.

Resource reading: Matthew 6:1-15.